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A 52-year-old legal practitioner, Kweku Sam-Amoah was on Friday, August 5, 2011 charged with three counts of stealing at a Takoradi Circuit Court, presided over by Kwesi Boakye. The plea of Lawyer Sam-Amoah was not taken and he was granted a bail in the sum of GH�170,000.The court also ordered that he should deposit his passport and all other travelling documents with the court registrar and re-appear in court on August 18, 2011. According to the prosecutor, Chief Inspector Alice Parker-Wilson, the complainant in the case is a student of University of Ghana and the son of the late Isaac Kofi Nketiah, a timber merchant, while the accused is a Takoradi-based lawyer and legal advisor to the late Nketiah. About 15 years ago, the timber merchant acquired 21 acres of land from the Anona Family of Apowa near Takoradi and paid GH�40,000 covering 10.3 acres of the land on 26th May 2010 to the land owners. The prosecutor said the deceased later instructed the accused to supervise the sale of the 10.3-acre land that he (Nketiah) had paid for to Gemini Maritime Services Limited, a company based in Tema. Lawyer Sam-Amoah allegedly negotiated with the company and sold the 10.3 acres land at the cost of GH�170,000, which the company agreed to pay in three installments. The company made the first payment in cheque with a face value of $39,160.84 and allegedly paid the money into the account of the accused at UBA in Takoradi on October 11, 2010, but the accused allegedly refused to inform the late Nketiah. Nketiah fell sick and his family members struggled to raise money to pay his medical bills, but Lawyer Sam-Amoah allegedly did not give any of the money to Nketiah, who later died on December 12, 2010. Gemini Maritime Services Limited paid $39,160.84 into the the account of the accused at United Bank for Africa (UBA) on 31st December 2010. The final installment of GH�52,000 was paid into the accounts of Lawyer Amoah at the Takoradi branch of the Zenith bank in January 2011. The final funeral rites of the late Nketiah was held at Dampong in the Asante-Akyem area of Ashanti Region on 15th March 2011 which the accused attended, but failed to reveal all transactions and monies he collected on behalf of the deceased to the children and family members. The prosecutor told the court that when the statement of the accused person�s account at UBA was checked, it was established that the accused had withdrawn all the monies paid into it by Gemini Maritime Services Limited. Lawyer Amoah however gave GH�40,000 out of the total amount to the witnesses in the case who are members of the Anona Family at Apowah.